Would you take your minor grandchild to this movie?

• Tomorrow (Friday, 3/23) the movie "The Hunger Games," based on the novel of the same name, premieres. Teens and preteens (mostly girls) are already lining up for tickets. Several months ago a bookstore employee recommended I get the book for my teen-aged granddaughter. I did, but decided to read it before sending it to her. True, author Suzanne Collins did a great job of writing the book, creating a dystopian society and moving the action at a fast pace. The novel is a strong comment on several negatives in today's society: gratuitous violence, exploitation of children, reality TV, totalitarian government, repression of freedom, classism. All this great writing comes at a price which the children in the book have to pay. In this post-apocalyptic North America, annually each district (state) must send a boy and a girl, chosen by lottery, to the "games." There they must kill each other or be killed in a nightmarish setting populated with horrors created just for them. As if trying to survive in a wilderness without food while trying to kill other children before being killed weren't enough. It puts the Cambodian "Killing Fields" to shame. Did I mention all the action in the kids' fight for survival is broadcast 24 hours a day and is must-watch TV enforced by the government? A couple of days ago on national news, I saw one young teenager say she hoped none of the book's violence was sacrificed to get a PG-13 movie rating. She wanted to see in the movie the violence she had read in the book. Am I the only one who thinks this is not appropriate entertainment for any child--as well as a lot of us adults? Am I being a squeamish prude? Will you be taking your grandkids to this movie? I don't think that kids who read or watch "Hunger Games" are going to run out and start killing other kids for the fun of it. I do think that glamorizing children participating in such violence is another way society exploits them and desensitizes them to the real suffering of others. If the book/movie portrayed child sex so graphically instead of child violence, I'm certain it never would have gotten published/screened, let alone received rave reviews. @ Whatevers: In alluding to the Killing Fields, I did not mean to compare the extent of the horrors, mass murders, torture, in Cambodia to what happens in "The Hunger Games." I was thinking of the Khmer Rouge's practice of forcing children for political reasons to kill others, even their own siblings and parents, or be killed themselves compared to Hunger Games' forcing children to kill each other for the country's entertainment.

• Answer:

  No I wouldn't and I wouldn't recommend the book because of it's violence. My daughter (age 38) recommended it to me a while back and I couldn't finish it as it disturbed me because of children killing children. I think there is enough real violence in today's world without glorifying it. You are not a prude. I agree with you 100% and applaud you for reading the book and making an intelligent decision.